A Thousand Bridges
by Kylara
Summary: One boy and one shinigami never meet. The lives of Uryuu, Orihime, Renji, Byakuya, and most of all, Ichigo and Rukia. IchiRuki. One-shot.


**A Thousand Bridges**  
One boy and one shinigami never meet. The lives of Uryuu, Orihime, Renji, Byakuya, and most of all, Ichigo and Rukia. IchiRuki. One-shot.

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: Bleach is owned by Kubo Tite. Consequently, these precious characters are his and not mine.

**Uryuu**

Kurosaki is a buffoon. A buffoon with ridiculously high spiritual power that he leaks like a... a hose. A leaky one. He is the spiritual equivalent of running around a public square without a shirt or pants or - god save them all - underwear, and the idiot doesn't even know it. He has zero self-awareness.

And in more ways than one. Not knowing your spiritual power is one thing, but Inoue Orihime is another. Uryuu finds it especially irritating that Kurosaki fails to notice her. The girl is exquisite, hopeful and sweet, yet her delicate blushes and hesitantly flirtatious queries to Kurosaki garner no reaction. It startles Uryuu at first - is Kurosaki really, genuinely, not noticing Inoue-san? How is that even possible?

That's what makes Uryuu realize: nothing affects Kurosaki. Nothing shakes that bland and somewhat miserable composure of his. Not fights or girls or gossip.

It's positively passive-aggressive.

He knows in the old days, when the Quincies had a network stretched across the land to protect humans from Hollows, they used to recruit the spiritually talented and make them part of a greater cause. But those days are long past, and he is not the man his teacher was. Kurosaki looks like he'd be a nightmare to teach anyway, all annoyance and no discipline. But he can't help but wonder... all that spiritual power and nowhere to put it, all that beating up of petty bullies when he could be killing monsters that prey on human souls.

Uryuu is happy killing Hollows. Alone. He's happy about that, naturally. He makes it a habit to kill them faster than the local shinigami, then leave before the confused gods get there. He laughs to himself about this private joke, just his to enjoy.

Ishida Uryuu is the last Quincy. Even if he wonders from time to time what it would be like to not be the last, what it would be like to have someone to work with and kill Hollows with and compete with and fight side by side with, there's no reason for it to be Kurosaki Ichigo, or anyone at all, because he is the last, and that means he is alone.

**Renji**

Rukia is going to flip, he's sure. Well… he never knows quite what she is going to do. Even back in the Good Old Days, she was constantly surprising him. Sometimes sweet and sometimes violent, but always Rukia. Every memory of her is unique and special and perfect; every memory is his favorite.

She used to throw herself through the door or windows or ceiling of their shack and roar all their names, her eyes wild with glee, and they would all stampede in, screaming and running. Now when he passes her in the hallways, she is quiet and calm, and her eyes look past him or below him, always away. But today, he's a vice-captain – a vice-captain, he can't believe it - and Ikkaku-san is telling him that now is the time, now he can go back to how things used to be, and he will, as soon as she's back, he will, because now he's a high-ranked officer. He's good enough for her.

But something gets stuck in his mouth when he first sees her after her one-month mission in the human world (it apparently went very uneventfully). He can't think of what to say or how to say it. He's high-ranked enough to talk to her now? He's not sure that's true. She's always, always been higher than him, and… well, she seems busy. And Captain Kuchiki continues to kick his ass halfway across the solar system every day, and how can he talk to her when he can't even stand tall against her brother? And while he's thinking, there she walks, far past him.

Renji can wait. He'll talk to her when he's made captain, he decides, though Kira sighs and Hinamori pleads. But he insists: this is the right thing to do, this is the respectful thing to do, and he ignores them when they look at him miserably. He knows what's perfect; if it takes ten or a thousand years, he'll wait.

One day, there is a Kuchiki wedding, a rare and exclusive event. Everyone says he is honored by the invitation, given since he is the vice-captain of the bride's brother. Whispers say the bridal outfit is an amount twenty times his annual salary; he looks at Rukia, pure and perfect in white, and knows it's not worthy. So little is.

Renji tries to be unselfish. Every day that he has ever known her – every day of his life – he has hoped for her happiness. Today, the day of her wedding, he cannot ruin that. Not for anything. With the biggest smile he can manage plastered onto his face, he tells her that he has never been so happy for her. Rukia looks at him and there is a strange light in her eyes – what is that? - but then she blinks, and it's gone. She thanks him for coming, and her face is the calmest he has ever seen it.

He wonders what it means.

One day soon after, he becomes captain, of the 5th – Captain Aizen had been promoted somewhere – and Rukia is there, at his ceremony. He's not sure why she's there, but finally, finally, this is his chance. The moment he has been waiting for is here. Ikkaku-san kicks him in the head and his other friends give him The Eye and everyone makes violent hand gestures towards Rukia. As he walks closer, his heart pounds with doubt - nothing's changed, says his heart, especially not him.

Renji feels his mouth stretch awkwardly into what he hopes is a grin, and he puts his hand on the back of his head, but he can't see her eyes because she's already bowing her head as she walks past.

**Orihime**

Kurosaki-kun is a mystery. She doesn't know how much of a mystery because she knows some things about him, but how much else is there? Maybe what she doesn't know is only a little bit more, but maybe it's everything.

His eyebrows are funny and his forehead is fierce. He's loyal to his friends and kind to his sisters, the second nicest older brother she's ever seen. Her heart curls up when she sees them together, and even though it hurts her heart, it warms it, too.

Kittens and hedgehogs and chinchillas, you can touch them and know what they're thinking. You can feel their warmth rising up beneath your hand, feel their backs arching in happiness or hate. And they feel your hand back, and maybe they reach back to you.

Kurosaki-kun isn't like that. Orihime feels like she's at a zoo, watching Kurosaki-kun behind glass; do not touch, he says. She reads the sign in his tensed shoulders, in that look of disinterest in his eyes.

All she needs is a chance. Just one chance to show him that even though she knows she's not the most special girl in the world, maybe not even his special girl, she can still be there for him. Tatsuki-chan says to make her own chance, and she tries, she really does. Whenever she passes by him: how is his family? what does he think of those clouds? has he ever been to the secret underground tunnels of Karakura?

He never lies. And yet, his answers make her sad. The glass makes her hands feel cold. He never lies, but what he says to her, he could say to anyone, and she feels like the least special girl in the world.

She wants more time with him, but before she knows it, there is no more to be had. Instead, before anyone could have anticipated, Kurosaki-kun has died. A terrible accident.

Tatsuki-chan is crying at the funeral, awful, awful sounds. Orihime cries, too. Why, oh why didn't she have more time? With more time, she would have eventually gotten to the right thing to say. She could have tried to say a thousand things to him, and surely one of them would have connected to him. She knows it.

But there isn't more time.

One day she looks up and looks out, and she thinks, what is that? If it is a monster, it is the scariest monster she has ever seen, because this one looks like the person she loves most in the whole world.

When she calls out for her brother, the monster answers with her name.

**Byakuya**

He had long feared what Hisana's sister was like; a child reflects her upbringing, and Rukia didn't have one. It is a relief to find that she is not a whore or a thief. His satisfaction ends there. She, like her sister before her, is an unhappy person. Byakuya hopes that being a member of the Kuchiki clan will change this, but he and generations of his family know how unlikely this is.

Indeed, the adoption does not bring her smiles. Still, he dares to think: she's not as miserable as her sister was, possessing none of the guilt that suffocated his wife. The Gotei 13 is providing her some purpose. He doesn't approve of their personalities, but Ukitake is a kind man, and his vice-captain is apparently very considerate of Rukia. They're sheltering her in the 13th, and for a brief moment, Byakuya allows himself to believe that she'll have a novel Kuchiki family experience.

Shiba Kaien dies, and Rukia grows more and more like her sister. She has unlimited access to everything the Kuchiki businesses own; for everything they do not own, she has unlimited money. Yet still, her chambers remain empty. She has no joy in the kimono he buys her or the flowers in the garden or the koi in the pond. Byakuya knows she was once acquainted with his own vice-captain, but the boy looks and never speaks. She needs something else.

When clan elders approach him about marrying her off, he hesitates. He married for love, and to the sister his wife begged him to protect, this loveless marriage is the best solution he can provide? Somehow, it seems that it is. Byakuya will not provide an heir, the clan wants to secure succession, and it is true that Rukia needs a change. He has a cousin of some sort; not a shinigami himself, though he has the blood for it. He is eloquent and erudite and young, and most importantly, he is kind. While he is unsuitable for succession as clan leader, his children with Rukia will be raised appropriately. Aside from being a great honor, it will secure her a place in this family long after he is gone.

Rukia is so like her sister. His wife's married years were like a dream; maybe, just maybe, he hopes, Rukia's will be, too.

Byakuya informs her of his plans; she bows and agrees. It must be acceptable, he concludes, and begins wedding preparations.

Sometimes when he sleeps, he hears Hisana's voice. He can hear her words quite clearly, but what she says makes no sense. Protect our sister, she says. Well, he is protecting their sister, for years already, and this wedding will cement that. The night before the wedding, Hisana's voice is louder and louder; no one ever said he was a man who did not heed his wife. He takes extra care to make sure the ceremony goes off without a single problem.

Rukia is beautiful that day, almost translucent with a calm that borders on resignation.

The marriage is not what he deems a success, or a failure. The young husband, whom to his credit truly is very kind, comes to him one day, pleading – do you know what jokes make her laugh, what topics make her talk, what songs make her sing? – and Byakuya sternly tells him to learn such things from his wife. But, the kind young husband says, she never tells me anything.

There are problems with the anticipated heir. Rukia is firmly instructed to let go of her shinigami duties when pregnant; she is, Byakuya reminds her, an unseated shinigami. She is replaceable. She has no duties worth worrying over. Yet she takes no comfort from these words. As time passes, the pregnancies end too early, taking a melancholic toll on the mother. Byakuya almost tells the kind young husband to stop trying but realizes that the decision does not lie with him.

Eventually, there is a baby girl. She laughs all the time, not like a Kuchiki at all. She is not much like her mother, either. Byakuya thinks about how happy his wife would have been that their bloodlines were united, and he is happy, too. He informs Rukia that he will naturally train the baby to take over his duties. She is still in pain from the difficult labor, he realizes too late, as her eyes well up and her hands shake, but she grits her teeth and tells him how greatly she is honored.

When Byakuya sleeps now, he does not hear Hisana's voice.

He thinks that he might have done good by her after all. It may have taken years, but Rukia has a child. The kind young husband is still kind: he thinks it best to rarely meet with his wife and her daughter; he tells his brother-in-law that she is happier that way. Yet still, she never smiles.

A few months later, Rukia goes on her first shinigami mission to the human world since before her pregnancy, and dies. The coroners deem it a tragic accident without cause. There is no Hollow reiatsu at the scene, no witnesses; just his dead sister. Captain Unohana says in her sympathetic and mildly censorious way that Rukia was still very weak; she was probably caught off-guard. No one hints to his face that perhaps his sister died a little less than involuntarily.

Byakuya adopts Rukia's daughter as his own.

Sometimes when he dreams, he can hear his sister's voice – quiet, as if from far away. Though he cannot hear what she is saying, somehow, he thinks he knows.

**Ichigo**

Ichigo is not very, very young when he dies, but enough that his entire high school senior class makes it to his funeral. Everyone goes when it's the first, and he's pretty sure that he beat even the gangster crowd to the ovens. His father is very proud.

He doesn't want to die. He has sisters that need him and an idiotic dad he doesn't trust with their safety, but death is death, and the shinigami that appears is very clear. In the end, Ichigo admits: he's curious about where souls go. It's one thing when they up and poof quietly into the night, and it's another entirely when they poof and leave behind blood and poisoned feelings.

He knows that those folks did not peacefully pass on. He doesn't want to be one of them.

Ichigo gets to Soul Society, but it's not long before he realizes that this is not heaven. He personally calls it a hellhole. For one, he's starving. For another, there's clearly no fucking way of finding anybody you know - there are millions and millions of souls, and none of them is his mother. For another, he ends up in District 78 of East Rukongai, the filthiest corner of them all, with people to match. At least he's an adult. At first, he can't imagine how children survive here. Then he finds out that for the most part, they don't.

A gently persuaded passerby tells him that there are a few ways of leaving Rukongai. Reincarnation via death is one way, and there are people in 78 happy to oblige him if that is the desired method. If he wants to live, well, that is a trickier business. Apparently, Ichigo's spiritual power, so unique in seeing spirits on earth, is still unique here in Soul Society - only now, everyone can see everyone else, and he just gets to be hungry. Broke in a city with almost no food or water, his death is getting off to a greaaat start.

The passerby, who speaks from several inches off the ground (Ichigo is kindly holding him above it), also mentions that he can probably become a shinigami. It's even been done before – okay, once – in decades prior, when two children managed to get from 78 down to Seireitei, the center of Soul Society, and enroll in the shinigami academy.

Well, what else is he supposed to do? He's hungry.

He goes to Seireitei and enrolls in the academy. He goes through fast enough that people debate calling him a prodigy, though they eventually stop after he's kept back in an attempt to improve his kidou. He learns about Hollows, though he finds the topic somewhat boring and frequently dozes in class. After he blows up his fifth training wing with another poorly controlled shakkahou!, the powers that be give up and graduate him to the Gotei 13.

Ichigo is assigned to Captain Abarai Renji of the 5th Division. The powers that be tell him that they should get along very well, given that the captain grew up in east 78th. One of the two kids, Ichigo guesses, and is mildly curious about the person he'll meet. Maybe someone appropriately bad-ass, having survived that hellhole as a child.

The reality is less entertaining. Abarai is ... depressing. For someone with loud hair and loud tattoos, he's a quiet, unhappy man, one who never smiles and only works. Ichigo's first and last attempt at small talk is asking his captain how he and the other kid made it out of 78; the man brutally shuts down the conversation.

Work is not exactly what Ichigo terms fulfilling. Killing Hollows is a pain in the ass: tedious, boring, and repetitive. Every day, he wakes up, leaves the protected grounds of Seireitei, kills Hollows, returns, and fills out paperwork. It is the same every day. How long has he wanted the power to take control of his life? Ichigo has died, he has passed on, he has become a god, and still, when he closes his eyes and feels the air above him, he knows without looking that it is wet with rain.

One day, Abarai's old buddies come drag him out to the bars, and Ichigo too. Madarame Ikakku takes to Ichigo after they have an argument about calligraphy (with fists). After one too many beers, Ikkaku drags him to the corner so that he can gossip like they're at a PTA meeting.

Apparently, the other kid from 78 got adopted into the Kuchiki family and cut off contact from Abarai. He spent years trying to become her social equal, but in the meantime, her brother married her off. Sometime after that, she had herself a baby and either got herself killed or killed herself, leaving the captain to stew in misery for the rest of eternity. Which, Ikkaku-san said, Abarai was doing very satisfactorily.

What a strange man. What was it like to live every day in the hope of one person?

All the girls at school blurred into a somewhat unmemorable lump; Ichigo's sure some of them were nice and pretty, but he was never interested in any of them. There was no one that he would have spent years of his life trying to reach, definitely not. No one needed his protection, really, what little he could give.

He remembers when he learned that his name meant "to protect one thing." That was a long time ago.

Years go by. Hollows die, and he is promoted, though to what end, he does not know. Indeed, after one day of his increased duties, Ichigo wonders if he can de-promote himself. His increased workload ends up including weekly meetings with Captain Kuchiki Byakuya, his own captain's former superior. He rapidly realizes exactly who Abarai patterned himself after. Byakuya is the prissier, colder version, and Ichigo looks forward to their meetings like he had a Don Kanonji episode.

Byakuya usually comes alone, but one day, he brings a young child with him. Byakuya does not bother to apologize for the inconvenience, only disdainfully introduces her as his heir, the princess of the Kuchiki house. Ichigo doesn't know kids all that well, but he remembers his little sisters, remembers raising them with whatever love he had in him, and there is something wrong with this kid. She has the biggest eyes that he's ever seen, and a mouth that looks like it forgot how to laugh. Though she is young, she does not move at all; she waits in perfect silence.

He can't stop himself from asking Byakuya where the child's mother is; the girl's eyes light up for the first time. The man clearly cannot believe he even dared to ask, but finally, he informs Ichigo that his younger sister, Rukia, passed away years ago. The girl's eyes go back down.

Ichigo continues with the meeting. What is a motherless kid to him? There are tons of motherless children out there. It is not his problem.

Ikkaku harasses Ichigo until the latter finally agrees to teach a calligraphy class. It's really a ploy for Ikkaku to see how many people have ichi in their names; he wants to defeat all of them in fights. Well, as for Ichigo, he's going to do calligraphy.

There is his name, on the scroll: Kurosaki Ichigo. For a brief moment, Ichigo stares at it, this name that looks odd and foreign to him.

It's strange. It's hard to remember what his parents told him about his name.

**Rukia**

Rukia thought the academy such a good idea at the time. She and Renji would enroll in school, learn about their powers, protect the weak, have rooms of their own and food on the table, and always, always, always be together, because they were family.

They are separated as soon as they enter school. In her classes, she feels stupid and lonely. Renji is happy, with his advanced class and advanced class friends; she looks at him and can't say a thing. It's her fault, after all, that she has no friends. She knows she's not very likable. Really, what's the point in telling him? Renji would feel awful if he knew. He has always wanted the best for her, and she has always wanted the best for him. When he tells her he's happy for her adoption, she understands. No matter how much this doesn't feel right, it has to be. Being part of nobility, being the younger sister of the clan leader, gaining rank and importance... it doesn't matter that these are things she never wanted. They must be good things, or why else would the great Kuchiki family be luring her with them?

The elders tell her that she was adopted because she resembles her new brother's late wife. One day, she sneaks a look at the portrait, the primary object in the austere room that serves as the late lady's shrine. She tries, but she cannot see a similarity. Hisana-sama wears grief in her eyes and a smile on her mouth. Rukia raised herself in the hazardous wild of the slums; she is not anything like this delicate and beautiful woman. She feels like an imposter. When she looks at her brother's back, she is sure he feels the same.

Rukia loves the 13th Division. Captain Ukitake is the best man she has ever met, not made cruel by the trials of illness, but kind. His division worships him, and he gets everything he wants with smiles and coughs. Vice-captain Shiba Kaien, on the other hand - he, they simply adore. When he wants them to do something, they argue and fuss and yell, but in the end, everyone - including herself, of course - basks in his presence.

She is just his subordinate. She knows that underneath the Kuchiki name and the Gotei 13 uniform that she is nothing special, and Kaien-dono treats her exactly so. She is grateful for this kindness. When she meets his wife, something clicks: Kaien-dono's special person, skilled and kind and beautiful, the perfect woman that he deserves. What wonderful people. She admires them very much.

When she kills Kaien-dono, when he dies, so, too, die other things. The sweetness of her admiration. The pride she had in herself. The hope that hers is a life worth living.

Captain Ukitake senses her melancholy, she knows. He sends her off on a mission to the real world, to a little town called Karakura. A little, uneventful town it turns out to be.

When she returns to Seireitei, she finds out that Renji has been promoted to vice-captain. She sees him in the hallways, but she doesn't know what to say. She knows him - even if they haven't talked, she knows how hard he's been working, how important this is. But what has she done? She can't bear to look him in the eye.

The years go by as if in a dream, or a nightmare. Her honored brother comes to her one day to tell her that he wants her to marry. He has the groom, whom he describes as a respectable member of the Kuchiki family. She has no idea if this is an upgrade or a downgrade from her current status. Rukia does not pretend to understand her brother, but she is not ungrateful.

She meets her groom on her wedding day. He has very kind eyes, she thinks; she feels sorry for him, forced to marry her by her brother's edict. They take up residence in the Kuchiki estate, and he makes no demands on her. He tells her that he wants to make her happy. Indeed, his eyes almost glow with some emotion. Her guess is that it's pity, and that, she does not deserve.

Duties are duties, and she knows what hers are. She was not brought into this family because she was someone special; she did not marry this kind man because she was someone special. She is here because she is convenient, and she has not forgotten what is convenient to do.

But something in her is quite terrified. How does one raise a child? She remembers being one - she remembers being scared, being cold, hungry and heartbroken. Her children will be raised in the Kuchiki house, nobles bred-and-born - they won't live cold or hungry. But will they be scared and heartbroken?

She wonders.

For an eternity of time, her wondering is pointless. She cannot carry a child to term. Rukia cannot stand to look at her brother; she fears his disapproval will crush her. He repeatedly reminds her that she is unranked and unimportant, that she need not worry about anything else other than the child, but even then, even when she knows all this and thinks about it constantly, she loses pregnancy after pregnancy.

When at last a surviving baby arrives, Rukia is momentarily overcome. She stares at her daughter's little face, the first person in the world that is blood-related to her. Rukia can hardly believe it, but her daughter – something that came from her – is quite beautiful.

Her brother enters the room; he was waiting outside the door, the attendants impress on her. Isn't he kind? And when he comes in, he stares at her for a moment before telling her that her child will be raised as his heir.

She forgot. In the ongoing struggle to have a child, she forgot that it would be his heir, that her daughter would be like her, raised like her. For a moment, her control cracks; she wants to cry from the horror of it. What has she done? Ruined another life, and this one, that of her own child.

Her ungratefulness astounds her, and she quickly thanks her brother, lest he know how horrible she is.

She spends what time she is allowed with her child. There are always servants and attendants and nurses around to do better than her; she worries about what damage she will do to the child simply by being her mother. How will it be to grow up in the Kuchiki family and have one's mother be this powerless? She resolves to get back on her feet as soon as possible. Renji has been promoted to captain already, and here she is, trailing so far behind him that he is as distant as a star.

At last, she is finally allowed out on a mission. Captain Ukitake decides to send her back to the same place as her last mission; she presumes since it had been such an easy location before.

Rukia looks up at the sky of Karakura. She feels as though someone is watching her, but when she turns around, she is not sure what she is seeing. Or rather, who she is seeing.

Surely, this is an illusion; how could it be otherwise? This captain was promoted, was he not?

**The Rotator**

Ichigo receives a transfer order. Not, sadly, out of the Division of Depressing from Captain Sucks-A-Lot, but a directive sending him to be the local shinigami for some spirit district in the human world.

He's pretty sure he kept his poker face - that would be eyebrows together, eyes uninterested - when they told him that he was going to Karakura. Karakura. Aren't there rules against sending shinigami back to the exact same neighborhood where they were alive? And it wasn't even that long ago that he was living... He ticks back his fingers and realizes, holy shit, for a human, it has indeed been a long time. How has he already been a shinigami this long? So long that he can forget the meaning of the name that his mother gave him, so long that the years mean nothing.

He can't help but be a little curious – are any of his family members still alive? Perhaps his sisters are. Who knows about his father, though, that man might have acquired one too many kicks to the face to still be alive. That said, shinigami aren't supposed to see their families… but isn't it their own damn fault for sending him back to his hometown? What screwball thought of this assignment?

They add some additional details. There's a strange problem of the assignees to Karakura and their short life spans. They would like him to find out why the posted shinigami keep dying so quickly. No one mentions that he is from Karakura; perhaps it has been so many years that they have lost the records.

Well, in the end, it isn't as though he cares.

He arrives back in Karakura. He spends his first week very seriously patrolling every part of the city, but he sees no one that he knows. He looks for his family, but the clinic is now an office building. He walks by where Tatsuki's apartment building was (or where he thought it was, anyway), but it's a hotel now. Chad's building is still there, but there is no Chad within. He supposes his friends did what he didn't – grow up, move on, have a life.

Ichigo looks at himself and shakes his head. They're probably old with kids, and he only looks like he's changed clothes.

The strange thing about Karakura, he ponders, is that for all that the former shinigami supposedly kept getting killed, he doesn't see many Hollows around. Well, they're there, but they're low-class monsters; nothing is particularly interesting. Were the shinigami really all killed by these pathetic hollows?

Ichigo wanders back by his old home, the office building. It's late and this is a business section of town, now; no one else is around. He orders up the record of Karakura on his Gotei 13 mobile… how many losers have they sent to Karakura? It is a long string of deaths. Perhaps something actually is strange here.

The first death that started the chain, though, is a different case altogether. The cause is unknown, he reads; no Hollow reiatsu. The shinigami simply died. How strange; who was this person? Kuchiki was the surname, but the first name is in katakana. Ru-ki-a, he reads. Who the hell was this, some scrawny relative of the 6th's captain? Why didn't the guy write his name in kanji?

He is so distracted that he doesn't notice when a Hollow opens a portal right behind him. Opening right behind his ass - that is just cheating. It's a good thing these fuckers always scream. And where the heck was his notification? His phone beeps, seconds too late. Ichigo resolves to go back and personally murder the 12th Division guy monitoring his section. He takes a swipe at the Hollow, but one explosion of smoke later and it has already vanished. This thing can certainly move between dimensions fast.

Someone is watching him. He pauses - out of the corner of his eye - what is that? There - yes! A woman, wearing a suit, standing on the side of the road, staring at him with an arched brow. No, she can't be staring at him. She's a human. He must be imagining things - there's no one else around. But she sure does look like she's staring at him. Funny, that.

"New at your job, are we?" the woman says. She has hair so black that it makes her skin look very white, or she has skin so white that it makes her hair look very black. He isn't sure which.

"You…" he stutters for a moment. No, no, Ichigo, that's a human. She can't see you. Stop talking. It's like talking to air; humans do not reply to you.

"Yes, you. You with the bright hair. I can see you." The woman is definitely looking straight at him. He resists the urge to turn around.

"Whaa…" Ichigo's voice cracks. "What do you mean, 'my job'? What do you know?"

She has enormous eyes, but from across the street, in the dark, he cannot catch their color. "Yes, I could see everything quite clearly. Like it catching you playing on your phone. Didn't your superiors tell you not to do that, or the Hollows will get you?"

"For your information, you insignificant human," he sneers, "I was doing research." He pauses, because he sounded so prissy he surprised himself. "Wait. Did you just say 'Hollow'?"

She does not smile, but he swears he can feel her amusement. "Yes, Hollow. I learned it from the last shinigami that came into town… though, really, that man was a much better shinigami than you."

"… that shinigami got KILLED. And one month into the job."

The woman shrugs. For such a tiny little thing, her shrug certainly conveys a great deal of condescension. "Yes, well…" She pauses, stares at him, and shakes her head. "You should probably leave this city. Good luck, kid." And with that, she begins to walk away.

Ichigo briefly regrets that he is not good at kidou because there are so many binding spells that would have made him very happy right about then.

Well, fine then. She's clearly got spiritual power if she can see him, so the Hollow is probably stalking her haughty human self. Two can play at that game.

He makes it about two blocks before the woman whirls around. She is not pleased to see him.

"You fool!" she says disparagingly. "Do you have a death wish? Not only are you following me, but do you not know how to hide your reiatsu?"

That last shinigami must have been the world's biggest gossip. Ichigo would file a complaint if the poor bastard wasn't already dead.

She is still glaring at him. "Hol-lows fol-low me," she says very slowly, as if speaking to a stupid child. "ALL THE TIME. They think that I am tasty. If you follow me, you're going to put yourself in danger!"

He feels like he has already spent far too much time gaping at this woman. "I'm a shinigami!" he yells. Yes, the yelling restores some of his confidence. "I kill Hollows! That's what I do! That's my job, so let me do it!"

She is already shaking her head. "Do you have any idea how many shinigami have come through here before you?" Actually, he does, but - "It was their jobs too," she emphasizes, "and they all died!" Her head shakes again. "The Hollows don't seem to bother the other people of Karakura. However, to shinigami..."

For a brief moment, there is a dull look in her eyes, but it passes. "Shinigami have a hard time fighting these Hollows," she says. "These monsters are vicious and strange - it's as if they were created to fight against your kind. The ones who came before you have been dying all my life, even before I was born."

"What does it matter if these Hollows are different from the normal ones? I can still fight them!"

"You can't handle this," the human insists. "They've yet to kill me - I know their ways, but they can't handle me because I'm human, and-"

She pauses.

How can such big eyes get even bigger?

The next thing he knows, this human woman has flung him to the ground, and the Hollow has come back. Since when are there Hollows that can appear without showing reiatsu? And how did she sense it before him? The Hollow is howling; she has stabbed it in the mask with a short, hollow knife (what kind of office lady is she?), but the damage is minimal. It's enough to distract it, though, and enough to give Ichigo a moment to evaluate.

He is uninjured.

The human is not.

"Don't stay here," she groans from the pavement. "Run away!" she roars, but there is nowhere else for him to go.

Is he the shinigami, or is she? He charges the Hollow from the back, no matter how cowardly that feels, and while the fucker dodges again (this is definitely a new breed of monster), he manages to stab it in the side. It does not die, but it does howl as it stumbles down the road, pouring blood from two wounds. Hers and his.

He stands in front of her. She is struggling to sit up against the building wall that was once his home, long ago.

"Human?"

Her breathing is faint. "You're a fool," she breathes. "I told you. The other shinigami were always caught off guard. They don't fight like other Hollows... "

There is a strange feeling in his heart, this woman bleeding on the pavement for him. He knows what this feeling is. A long, long time ago, he remembers what it felt like to be protected.

"I'm not a coward," Ichigo says. "If you know how to fight this Hollow, tell me how. No one will die here, not you and not me."

Her eyes are wide. He can see their color now, a dark, clear violet, looking straight at him. "Well, if that's the case, shinigami. We have a deal."

"It's not 'shinigami,' human. It's 'Kurosaki Ichigo.'"

Is that – yes, it is. Through the blood trickling down her face, she does something that he is certain is rare.

"It's not 'human,'" she begins, and she smiles up at him. He cannot help but smile back.

The Hollow is screaming in the background, but all Ichigo can hear is her name.

~fin June 12, 2010.

Beta-reader Qwirky/Athena – thank you for being precious and dear to my heart. Also for sort of being, you know, an amazing beta.

**Notes**  
Inspired by a discussion at the Ichiruki FC Bleach Asylum; also by chapters 00A and 00B, the Sand and the Rotator. There are references to those chapters.

Rukia's bedroom in the Kuchiki house is shown in movie three, Fade to Black. It has a mirror and a writing desk with a bunny carved in it. There is nothing else in the room.

The alternate title for this story was hitsuzen. Yuuko from xxxHolic defines hitsuzen as: "A naturally foreordained event; A state in which other outcomes are impossible. A result which can only be obtained by a single causality, and other causalities would necessarily create different results."


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